Bullying gays

There actually is a very small number of kids who are active bullies, particularly on LGBT issues. Only 13% of American high school kids agree with the statement: I don't like gay people. So it tends to be kids who are a minority in their school but have very strong feelings about LGBT people and who feel somehow compelled to express those. So I think the reality is is that one thing that young people get confused about is because a few bullies are engaging a lot of bad behavior and no one stops them, they think that everybody dislikes them. One of the critical things we need to do is intervene every that bullying occurs so that the kids understand that bullies actually don't represent most people; they represent a fairly small minority. But when you're the kid getting bullied and everybody's standing around doing nothing about it, it can sure feel like the whole world is against you.

Kevin Jennings

Educational Specialist

Kevin Jennings is the Executive Director of the Arcus Foundation, a leading global foundation advancing pressing social justice and conservation issues. Specifically, Arcus works to advance LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) equality, as well as to conserve and protect the great apes.

Kevin has a long and distinguished career as an educator, a social justice activist, a teacher, and an author. From 2011-2012 Kevin was CEO of Be the Change, a nonprofit that creates national issue-based campaigns on pressing problems in American society. While there he helped launch Opportunity Nation, a campaign designed to increase opportunity and economic mobility in America.

From 2009-2011 Kevin served as Assistant Deputy Secretary of Education, heading the department’s Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools (OSDFS). In this role, Mr. Jennings led federal efforts to promote the safety, health and well being of America’s students. Kevin led the Obama Administration’s anti-bullying initiative, which culminated in March 2011 with the White House Conference on Bullying Prevention keynoted by President Obama.

Kevin began his career as a high school history teacher and coach, first at Moses Brown School in Providence, R.I., from 1985 to 1987, and then at Concord Academy in Concord, Mass., from 1987 to 1995. At Concord, he served as the faculty advisor to the nation’s first Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) leading him in 1990 found GLSEN, a national education organization bringing together lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) and straight teachers, parents, students, and community members who wanted to end anti-LGBT bias in our schools. Jennings left teaching in 1995 to build the all-volunteer GLSEN organization into a national force, serving as its founding Executive Director until 2008. Under his leadership, GLSEN programs such as Gay-Straight Alliance, the Day of Silence and No Name-Calling Week became commonplace in America’s schools. GLSEN’s advocacy was key in passing comprehensive safe schools laws in eleven states, increasing the number of students protected from anti-LGBT discrimination from less than 900,000 in 1993 (less than 2% of the national student body) to 14.3 million by 2008 (nearly 30%).

Mr. Jennings and his partner, Jeff Davis, a senior executive at Barclay’s, are celebrating 20 years together in 2014. They are the proud “parents” of a Bernese mountain dog, Ben, and also have a “granddog” in Ben’s son, Jackson.

There actually is a very small number of kids who are active bullies, particularly on LGBT issues. Only 13% of American high school kids agree with the statement: I don't like gay people. So it tends to be kids who are a minority in their school but have very strong feelings about LGBT people and who feel somehow compelled to express those. So I think the reality is is that one thing that young people get confused about is because a few bullies are engaging a lot of bad behavior and no one stops them, they think that everybody dislikes them. One of the critical things we need to do is intervene every that bullying occurs so that the kids understand that bullies actually don't represent most people; they represent a fairly small minority. But when you're the kid getting bullied and everybody's standing around doing nothing about it, it can sure feel like the whole world is against you.